Re: [atlarge-discuss] Naming suggestion

["Ron Sherwood" <sherwood@islands.vi>]

Thank you, Jefsey, for your clear reasoning.

    It was a tongue-in-cheek suggestion due to the acronym "GOD" which is
pretty much globally recognized, regardless of language.

    To be serious though, there will have to be a compromise as far as
language is concerned.  I doubt that it is possible to find a name that is
representative of our mission, and which has the same meaning in every
language on Earth.  I, and I suspect many others, would have great
difficulty relating to a name that is comprised of Chinese characters or
Sanskrit. Yet many languages do include local translations of English words
that are in general use on the Internet. I looked to see if the domain name
I-GOLD (Internet Global On-Line Democracy) was available. It was available
with a .org suffix, but taken with the .com suffix. That name is owned by a
Korean. The owner may well have the same name in the Korean language, but I
have no way of researching that.

    The suggestion that we have an umbrella organization which allows local
interpretation of mission, goals and even the name, is a good one.  However,
I do not think that the name of the umbrella organization can be meaningful
in every language without translation.

Regards, Ron



----- Original Message -----
From: "J-F C. (Jefsey) Morfin" <jefsey@club-internet.fr>
To: "Ron Sherwood" <sherwood@islands.vi>
Cc: <atlarge-discuss@lists.fitug.de>
Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: [atlarge-discuss] Naming suggestion


> On 12:06 11/08/02, Ron Sherwood said:
> >Good morning, my fellow at-largers:
> >    Has anyone considered calling ourselves the Global Online Democracy?
> >    It clearly describes our goals and it does shorten to a universally
> >recognised acronym that is very easy to remember (and even descriptive of
> >ICANN).
> >Ron Sherwood
>
> Dear Ron,
> this is one of the problems of International operations. we handle words
> which have not the same weight and meaning, nor the same impact on all.
You
> will see that I did consider exactly your very proposition for Global
> Internet Democracy, translating it in "international understanding".
>
> 1. "global" is a multi meaning word which has intrdoduced a lot of
> confusion because the French/Egnglish meaning is "all the partis of a
> whole", and the American one "unversal". In addition to "the all the
Globe"
> in both. Understandngs in different other cultures can be different. So
> better to use a concrete object word than a concept. Hence the use of
> "world" in world@large. Everyone knows and understand it better.
>
> 2. Online is a very confusing word. First because many people are not
> connected. Because many will not be online but asynchronous. Because
> technologies may vary and laws may differ. What we want to say is "online
> on the internet" and a certain vision of the Internet (not the 47 USC
> 230.f.1). This vision is commonly "felt" (rather than defined all over the
> planet) though the "@" sign. As in world@large.
>
> 3. Democracy. We are not specifically interested in political democracy -
> this is a very complex notion which isn right now, evoluating because of
> the Internet. So we do not want confusion with politics and different
> regimes. We do not want our Chinese, Viet-Namese, Iraqi ... members
> confused with opponents. Our target is "the broadest basis to sit the
> common consensus". This fits "large". Please remember that in latin
> languages the word "large" means "wide". So the @large sounds like a big,
> wide, strong Internet representation. As in world@large.
>
> So you see that we are totally in agreement, but in an international
> environment.
>
> For example I undrestand that some may have some concerns about ED and the
> word "at large". There were probably 150.000 @large registered people in
> 2000. They will remember being one. I am sure less than 10% ever known who
> ED is, and less than 1% remembers. This may seem important to you in the
US
> press, but it is very local. Would you really care if Chirac had an @large
> sign on his jacket on the 14th of July? Or if Blair said he supports
Denise.
>
> jfc
>
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